Why You Should Still Take Field Notes for Your Photos
- Who?
- What?
- When?
- Where?
- Why?
photo by amenic181 via iStock
Unless you’ve been in the photography game for decades, you likely aren’t taking field notes for your photos. However, with the modern resurgence of film photography, more and more photographers are learning about the benefits of field notes.
Of course, most of our modern technology handles our photography field notes for us, but similarly to the book vs. kindle argument, taking field notes for your photos the old-fashioned way presents a lot of benefits.
This article is going to walk you through how to take field notes for your photos if you never have before and it will also show you all of the benefits of taking notes with your photos.
Why Did People Used to Take Field Notes?
photo by ilbusca via iStock
Before the creation of EXIF data, cameras couldn’t capture information like the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO that was used for each photo. So, if you weren’t taking photography notes by hand, information like camera settings (and the time and date of your photo) didn’t exist.
This became an even bigger issue when you think about the fact that photographers in the golden age of film couldn’t actually see their images while they were taking them. So, if they didn’t write down information about their shutter speed, their aperture, and their ISO, they would never know how to hone their images. They could get a great image one day and a terrible one the next and wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the two.
However, since we do have EXIF now, a lot of photographers stopped taking field notes altogether. I personally believe that this is also a mistake because taking field notes for your photos allows you to take a moment to really think about what you do and don’t like about your images as you’re taking them. It is a period of reflection.
Field Notes Help You Present Your Photos Better
photo by lechatnoir via iStock
I already mentioned the number one reason why you should be taking field notes for your photos: it allows you to reflect on what you’re doing.
However, field notes for photography have a wide range of benefits. For example, if you are planning on exhibiting your work in a gallery, it makes sense to also showcase your field notes for your photos. These notes help you to tell a much better story about the time and place your image was taken. They also help photography fans understand everything they need to know about your photos.
Keeping field notes for your photos also allows you to see how your photography has grown over the years. You can open up your field notes for your photos from years ago and compare them to your more modern field notes to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. Essentially, your field notes for your photos can act like a diary of your craft.
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How to Take Great Field Notes
photo by janiecbros via iStock
You shouldn’t be taking field notes for your photos if they aren’t thorough enough, since you can just use your EXIF data for that.
So, in order to take great field notes, you should be recording the answers to the following five questions:
When I first started taking meticulous field notes, I acted as if I was participating in photojournalism. I acted as if I would have to take my field notes home with me and write a complete article about each image. This helped me to record some of the more important information about my images.
However, it’s also important to have the right equipment for taking field notes. This is where the EDC Fieldbook comes in.
The EDC Fieldbook is a leather journal cover that prevents your field notes from getting ruined by bad weather. It comes in either bridle leather or Excel Pull Up leather and carries your spiral notebook, your pens and pencils, your business cards, a flashlight, even a pocket knife.
It features 8 pockets and 5 hang slots so that you can carry everything you need and nothing you don’t. The EDC Fieldbook even comes with a slot specifically for your passport for photographers who travel all the time.
The EDC Fieldbook fits a spiral notebook of 4.625 x 7”. So you don’t have to worry about finding one that fits perfectly, each EDC Fieldbook comes with a pre-installed notebook and you can come back to the HoldfastGear website to purchase new notebooks for your fieldbook for $7.
The EDC Fieldbook comes in a huge array of colors, from chestnut to navy to green and is only $85.
